Even as an “experienced” content writer nothing makes me suffer nausea quite like creating a new draft only to stare at that damn flashing cursor . If you plan to get rid of that horrifying experience, you got to be prepared with an idea every time you open a new Microsoft word to write a content- meaning you have to be flooded with ideas.

Brainstorming can be really scary and the biggest question is, where to begin with? Where to get the ideas from? This is the most common concern among marketers. To help you brainstorm some ideas, here is a little hack: the actual key to brainstorming.

 Making use of brainstorming key

Before you actually get into the how-to of this ingenious tool,don’t forget to download his brainstorming spreadsheet. If you are ready to rock, let’s begin.

The tool will ideally mimic how a creative mind turns a single idea into many. How to change one topic of your content into countless ideas, here are few steps below:

Box 1: Place your initial topic in the first box

This is the core idea around which you need to brainstorm. The subsequent few steps will help you frame the reference point more narrowly, so you can effortlessly come up with numerous related topics to create your article, blog posts, graphics, guides and lot more. For eg: the topic here is “all about fitness” that we wish to write about.

Box 2: Selecting the understanding level: Beginner, Intermediate or Advanced- depending on how familiar your readers are about the subject

Audience	Beginner	Intermediate	Advanced
How familiar is your audience with the topic above?

Simply drag the STAR in the section that represents your audience for which the content is envisioned. Deciding on the skill sets in important because it is obvious that an advance level reader would not be interested in the basics of a topic- distinguishing skill level helpstay focused on the piece you are creating.

Box 3: Deciding the content structure

Content structure	List	Q & A	How-to	News	Definition	Data Analysis	Why/Opinion
What exactly is your content all about and how do you plan to organize it

Content structure will help you organize the content. If you choose “list” for the first set of ideas, means you need to brainstorm on list-type of content. Your topics would be like “10 best ways to stay fit this winter” rather than “Why to get in shape this winter”. If you think you are not able to find more content this way then you could probably switch to something else and create something relevant.

Box 4: Picking the format/medium

Medium	Blog post	Slideshare	Graphic	Video	Guide/Ebook	1-Sheet	Podcast
Randomly select the medium of your content that you will physically create

The next step is to narrow down your process by specifying the format or medium that you need in the content. This can be a random selection-or something mentioned by the client. With this you do not have to decide through various types of content and stick to a single medium such as blog post, podcast or video.

Remember, some ideas lend themselves better to a particular medium than others.

Box 5: Actual time for brainstorming! Think of as many headlines possible till you run out of ideas.

With a neat and nice visual reference, you can trace down as many headings possible. When I’m short of ideas, I simply amend something in the boxes, let’s say. I switch from blog post to a podcast-brainstorm even more and will an all new focus.

As mentioned in the image above, use the criteria picked- a list based content offers tips of being fit for beginners- my brainstorming led me to these ideas.

Check that I focused on the standards above and took tangents from the ideas of “All above fitness”. Next time if you feel hit by an inspiration, don’t just start creating something out of the blue and rather practice this exercise instead. You will have long list of content ideas that you will never lose focus and you don’t have to spend time wasting time staring at that blinking cursor.

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